Who is the ChiefHomeOfficer?

YOU are - or anyone who works from home. Whether you're a full-time 1099er, a corporate teleworking W-2er, a part-time eBayer, or any head-of-household handling family, finances and affairs from a corner desk - and in search of a little balance in the home office, then ChiefHomeOfficer's your destination.
Think of Chief Home Officer.com as LifeHacker meets the home office - no matter what home office you run. Entrepreneurs will discover SOHO 2.0 business insight. Teleworkers will learn leading-edge remote work strategies. will spot tips, tales and links on balance. And those considering making the leap into home officing will unearth equal parts reality and validation. Explore. Learn. Return.

The SOHO Sherpa…

ChiefHomeOfficer is your SOHO Sherpa - a guide to all the things that make the Small Or Home Office (SOHO) work. Since 1993, we've chronicled the work-at-home adventure. Today, the site offers honest and occasionally humorous insights, tips, tech/product reviews, and commentary that cut through the "Make Millions From Home" promise and just lay down the real skinny on a lifestyle people can work and live with.

Want to learn more? If you work from home, want to, or are a corporate marketer hoping to talk to those who do, email jeff [at] chiefhomeofficer dot com.

Meta

On Monday, I received my weekly WHY Xtra from WorkHomeYou.com. The topic: Five Phrases that Help Diffuse Testy Customers. If you work from a home office, or small business, or a some cave where you serve your customers, take note.

Along with apologies and a promise to “…get to the bottom of this,” Dina and the gang included such lines as, “I hear what you’re saying,” and “I would feel the same way if I were you.”

Never were sincerity, empathy and a more vivid, heart-felt display of true emotional sucking-up distributed by stroke of the Enter key.

I, on the other hand, take a different approach. I asked Dina whether, “Get Lost, you lousy, cheapskate weasel!” might be an appropriate response? Or what about a promise that if they don’t back the heck off, I’ll send their email address to my dear friends and lonely souls — those deposed Nigerian oil ministers looking for someone, anyone, to deposit US$10.5 million into their bank account…?

No? Then how about these responses to testy customers…

1. Oh, THAT bid expired yesterday.

2. For these prices you expect perfektion?

3. This is a collaborative effort. I just write the stuff. You have to make sure it’s actually right.

4. Because of rising fuel prices and the cost of imported beer, the Chief Home Officer finds it necessary to institute a Per-Word Surcharge.

5. What, you don’t like the dog barking and SpongeBob cackling and iTunes playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers in the background? This ain’t no cubicle farm, you know…

6. Deadlines? We don’t need no skeenkeen deadlines!

7. You’re paying for the words. My ornery attitude is free.

8. I didn’t write that mean-spirited email. That was my Evil Twin, on Ambien!

9. If you don’t like the way I do things, try one of the 1,983,490 other freelance writers who were pink slipped and who launched their home-based business yesterday so they could seek balance and riches from home.